


The Sundial

by MrProphet



Category: Bagpuss
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-22 23:18:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10707234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet





	The Sundial

_“Once upon a time_   
_Not so long ago_   
_There was a little girl and her name was Emily_   
_And she had a shop._

_“It was rather an unusual shop because it didn't sell anything_   
_You see, everything in that shop window was a thing that somebody had once lost_   
_And Emily had found_   
_And brought home to Bagpuss_   
_Emily's cat Bagpuss_   
_The most Important_   
_The most Beautiful_   
_The most Magical_   
_Saggy old cloth cat in the whole wide world._

_“Well now, one day Emily found a thing_   
_And she brought it back to the shop_   
_And put it down in front of Bagpuss_   
_Who was in the shop window fast asleep as usual_   
_But then Emily said some magic words:_

“‘Bagpuss, dear Bagpuss  
Old fat furry cat-puss  
Wake up and look at this thing that I bring  
Wake up, be bright  
Be golden and light  
Bagpuss, Oh hear what I sing.’

_“And Bagpuss was wide awake_   
_And when Bagpuss wakes up all his friends wake up too_   
_The mice on the mouse-organ woke up and stretched_   
_Madeleine, the rag doll_   
_Gabriel, the toad_   
_And last of all, Professor Yaffle, who was a very distinguished old woodpecker_   
_He climbed down off his bookend and went to see what it was that Emily had brought.”_

“Yes, yes, yes; this is very interesting,” Professor Yaffle said.

The mice scrambled down from the Mouse Organ and huddled around the woodpecker. “What is it?” they asked. “What is it?”

“Nyeh, nyeh; silly mice, how can you see what it is if you’re all clustered around me. Go on; stand back, stand back.”

The mice obediently backed off and gave the Professor some space.

“Now, look at the thing that Miss Emily has brought in and see if you can put it back together.”

“Yes!” Charlie Mouse declared. “We  _will_  fix it.”

The mice clustered around the thing, rearranging and reassembling. And as they worked, they sang:

“We will fix it, we’ll refit it,  
“We will set it to rights, rights, rights.  
“We will dust it, do-just-what-we-must-to it,  
“Make it glow like a light, light, light.”

“Excellent, excellent,” Yaffle applauded. “Now, you see that there are two flat wooden panels, each with a dial face marked in black, and you’ve fixed the two panels with a hinge so that they can fold together.”

“But what is it?” the mice demanded. “What is it?”

“This is a sundial,” Yaffle replied.

“What’s a sundial?” Charlie Mouse asked.

“It’s a kind of clock,” Yaffle explained. “This one is a very small, pocket sundial and you would use it like Miss Emily’s watch.”

“Like a watch?” Janie Mouse asked.

“But where are the hands?” Eddie Mouse asked.

“A sundial doesn’t have hands,” Madeleine told them. “With a sundial you tell the time using a shadow cast by the sun.”

Yaffle looked up in delight. “Yes, yes, yes!” he cried. “That’s right. The shadow falls on one of the lines on the dial and that tells you the time.”

Willie Mouse ran over and stood in the window so that his shadow fell right across the sundial and the other mice clustered around it.

“What’s the time?” they asked.

“We can’t tell,” Lizzie Mouse added, crestfallen.

“Of course not,” Yaffle said. “Now listen, you mice. You don’t make the shadow yourself, it’s made by a bit of the sundial called the gnomon.  _This_  sundial is missing it’s gnomon, so we need to find a new one.”

“But what can we make it from?” Charlie Mouse asked.

“You need to make a shadow that will fall sharply on one point, so you need something very thin; much thinner than Willie Mouse. For a pocket sundial like this one, you need a thin, black thread. I expect you’ll find something suitable in Miss Madeleine’s sewing box. Lizzie Mouse, why don’t you go and ask if we can have a little piece of thread? The rest of you mice, I want you to get your flying machine and fetch the battery torch from the shelf.”

The mice hurried off crying: “The flying machine, the flying machine!” over and over again, while Lizzie Mouse climbed up to Madeleine’s shelf.

“Dear Madeleine,” she said. “May we please have a piece of thread to make a gnome?”

“A gnomon,” Madeleine laughed. “Of course you may, Lizzie Mouse. Take a piece of the black twist.”

While Lizzie dug in the sewing box, the other mice had got out their ‘flying machine’, a clever crane made out of a fishing rod which they had once used to play a trick on Professor Yaffle, and were using it to fetch a torch down from a high shelf.

“Good, good,” Yaffle said. “Now if you turn on the light and swing it from side to side, you will see that my shadow moves about on the ground behind me.”

The mice did as he said and they did indeed see that his shadow leaped and danced along the floor.

“Ooh,” they gasped.

“And as the sun moves across the sky through the day, the shadow of the gnomon moves,” Yaffle finished. “That is how the sun tells you the time.”

The mice lowered the torch to the ground and came back down into the window.

“But how does the sun know the time?” Jenny Mouse asked.

“Well,” said Gabriel, “the sun knows what time it is by looking at where he is. You see, he always walks at the same speed and… I know a song about it in fact; I think you have a music roll for that song in the mouse organ.”

Eagerly, the mice scrambled up onto the organ and mousehandled a music roll into the top of the instrument.  
Janie Mouse took up a pose on the box while the other mice went to the bellows. “The Marvellous. Mechnical. Mouse Organ!”

The Mouse Organ played a quick, lively tune and Gabriel played an accompaniment on his banjo and sang:

“Quite early in the mor-orning,  
When all the world was dark,  
The merry sun got out of bed,  
To the singing of a lark.  
He got his boots and raincoat on  
And went out for a walk.  
He walked all day from morn ‘til dusk,  
No time to stop and talk.”  
Madeleine took up the tune for the second verse:  
“The sun he walked at a steady pace,  
He never slowed his stride.  
No more did he slow, for even a mo,  
Or turn his course aside.  
He left his house in the early morn,  
And walked uphill ‘til noon,  
Then he tripped downhill all even-ing  
And came home in the evening’s gloom.”  
“And so he walks out every day,  
In fair weather, rain or snow.”  
“Long walks in summer, short in the cold  
Around the world he goes.”

“Nyeh, nyeh, nyeh,” Yaffle scoffed. “Fiddlesticks and flapdoodle. The sun doesn’t walk around the world. In fact, the sun doesn’t go around the world at all.”

“It does,” the mice insisted. “It does.”

“Nyeh, nyeh, nyeh. Go up to my bookshelf and bring me down the small, blue volume and I will show you.”

The mice clambered up the stacks to Professor Yaffle’s bookend. Charlie Mouse and Eddie Mouse carefully slid the blue book from its place and passed it down to Willie Mouse and Lizzie Mouse, who passed it down to Jenny Mouse and Janie Mouse. Charlie Mouse and Eddie Mouse scrambled past to take the book next, and they passed it down to Yaffle.

The title on the cover of the book read:  _Principles of Mathematics, by Sir Milton Isaac Newtown_.

“Thank you, mice,” Yaffle said. He opened the book at a page illustrated with an image of the sun with various planets circling around it. “The rotation of the planets,” he read. And the mice gathered around to look at the pictures.

“There was a very learned man,  
Nicholas Copernicus was his name,  
Who studied the ways of the natural world,  
To see what changed and what stayed the same.  
He was troubled by the moving sun,  
He wondered did it really roam.  
The answer he found by chance one day,  
While wandering far from home.  
Glancing to his side one day,  
He watched a tower marching by,  
The faster he walked, it seemed to him,  
The faster the tower did fly.  
And when he stopped, the tower stopped,  
As though it were watching Nicholas,  
And that was when he realised,  
That the tower was standing fast.  
He knew a tower could not walk,  
It certainly could not run,  
It was he that moved, it only seemed,  
And so it was with the sun.  
The sun stood still, it was plain to see,  
So Nicholas saw now.  
It seemed to move because the Earth,  
Was speeding round and round.”

“There, you see. As I always say, if you really want to know about something, you must research it thoroughly.”

“Whee!” Jenny Mouse spun past Yaffle’s head, suspended from the arm of the flying machine. “The world is spinning!” she called out.

“Yes, yes!” Yaffle called excitedly. “And when research runs out, there is always a spirit of experimentation. Jenny Mouse sees the world spinning around her, and we see the sun spinning around us, but really it’s the world – and Jenny Mouse – that does the spinning.”

“Can I have a go?” the mice chirruped. They all ran towards the end of the arm, but that left no-one holding the other end and Jenny Mouse fell suddenly.

Yaffle darted forward and caught the plummeting mouse in his wings. “You silly mice,” he said. “You must be more careful. Jenny Mouse could have been seriously hurt.”

“Yes,” Madeleine agreed. “You really must be more careful, mice. Are you alright, Jenny Mouse?”

“I’m alright,” Jenny Mouse quavered. “But I think I need to lie down.”

“Of course,” Yaffle said. “Mice, take Jenny Mouse up to the Mouse Organ.”

“Oh, and quickly,” Madeleine said. “Look at the time.” She pointed at the sundial.

“What?” Bagpuss asked. “Oh yes.”

“What’s the time, Professor Yaffle?” Willie Mouse asked.

Yaffle hopped over to the sundial and inspected it closely. “Let me see, the shadow is falling on the five, so it must be… Time for bed.”

Bagpuss gave a great yawn of agreement.

“Quickly, mice,” Madeleine said. “Put the sundial in the window and back to the Mouse Organ.”

And so the mice pushed the sundial into the front of the window, in case an astronomer who had lost it should come by the shop, see the sundial, and come in to collect it.

_“Bagpuss gave a big yawn, and settled down to sleep_   
_And of course when Bagpuss goes to sleep, all his friends go to sleep too_   
_The mice were ornaments on the mouse-organ_   
_Gabriel and Madeleine were just dolls_   
_And Professor Yaffle was a carved wooden bookend in the shape of a woodpecker_   
_Even Bagpuss himself once he was asleep was just an old, saggy cloth cat_   
_Baggy, and a bit loose at the seams_   
_But Emily loved him.”_


End file.
